AN: Can you believe it? I got a chapter written in the middle of March Madness! (Go, UConn!) This one might have a touch of action and danger in it. And some naughty words.
If you get particularly worried for any characters while reading, remember this quote from The Princess Bride: "She does not get eaten by eels at this time." In other words, trust me and try not to worry too much. *g*
Janice is, as ever, a fantastic beta. She's smart and speedy and helpful all at the same time!
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Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.
In the midst of the agony and the invading thoughts and memories, he still knew he was Sam, but it was hard to hang onto. If he hadn't endured so many different possessions and invasions, he probably wouldn't have been able to hang on at all, but he'd had lots of practice. But, shit, it hurt.
Sam found the physical part of the anguish and grabbed onto it, using it to painstakingly pull himself out of the muck of resentment and anger and desire to cause pain and must please Lucifer that he was mired in. He wasn't the source of those feelings, but they were overwhelming.
I am Sam Winchester. Dean is coming, he repeated to himself over and over. Lucifer couldn't defeat me. Neither can his stupid scythe.
Waves of mad glee buffeted him at random times, with thoughts like I have His vessel and I am the mighty one now.
Sam gave a big mental shove to give himself space for independent thought. "If you're so mighty, why are you hidden down on the forest floor?" he taunted, unsure if his captor could hear him until the ground itself began to shake beneath him, then rise up. He held onto that sensation too, trying to use it to, well, ground himself. He could feel the grass beneath him now, the terrible pain centered on his lower chest, even the grit in his eyes from being exposed to so much smoke. He embraced it all because the fact that he was feeling it meant that he was winning the tug-of-war for his own consciousness.
The shaking of the earth beneath him made the pain increase, but he reminded himself that it was good that he'd goaded the thing into expending more power (though he hadn't expected it to actually move the ground). Its resources – including him – were finite.
The scythe was speaking again, but Sam ignored it, shoring up his walls against its feelings and memories, still reminding himself of who and what he was. If he just laid on the ground and let his opponent have its way, he couldn't perform his part taking it down. Because there was no way Dean wouldn't come and do his part. Hopefully soon.
Keeping his motions slow both to avoid detection and to cause himself as little pain as possible, Sam inched his butterfly knife out of his front jeans pocket. It and his boot knife were the only weapons on his person, and he couldn't reach the latter. He needed a sillich weapon, one that was blessed. Lucifer hated them, so they should hurt something formed from his power.
Ideally, such a weapon would be a sword with symbols etched on its blade over which some kind of priest or shaman spoke a consecration, but as a Hunter, he'd used many redneck versions of rites and weapons before. A pocketknife with the symbols traced in Sam's own blood and the rite whispered against it in desperation would have to do. Luckily, he actually knew the Enochian version of the words, which made them exponentially more powerful even when spoken by someone pinned face down in the dirt.
It wasn't like he needed to destroy his opponent. He just needed a tad bit of time. Sam closed his eyes and made the shapes on the blade with his finger, one at a time, each over top of the last. Luckily, they were simple, all similar to letters in human languages, so he could make them from memory.
Eszett for purity
Dze for strength
Mu for endurance
Digir for power
Ka for repelling evil
The vines that were now forming a loose roof over Sam undulated, causing the one that was against his torso to move as well. He hissed in pain again. If he took too long to get himself under control, he'd just pass out (or die) before he ever got things in motion.
He slowly bent his arm until the knife was next to his face, then whispered in that hated language, hoping against hope that this would make the paltry weapon able to actually hurt the devil's chair. And more than that, hoping that Dean had gotten and understood his message.
As if conjured by the thought, Sam heard gunshots. His already pounding heart sped up a little more with conflicting emotions. Relief: it had to be Dean. There was just no feasible way someone else would happen to find Sam before Dean did. Fear: there was a reason Dean was shooting, meaning he was in danger. While that danger was also an integral part of Sam's plan, he would never, under any circumstances, be happy that his brother was in danger, especially when he was unable to help.
"I hea' gunshots," Sam ground out breathlessly, doing his best not to slur too much. He finally managed to peel his eyes open. The cursed chair wavered in his sight as he clung to consciousness. "Whassout there?"
"Shadow birds," the snath answered dismissively, clearly not paying much attention to the question. "I have built a dais, as is fitting."
It took an extra beat for Sam's mind to comprehend the answer. He ignored the whole 'dais' thing. Megalomania worked in his favor.
"Sh-sharpas?" That wasn't what he'd expected, and it wasn't exactly good news, but he could work with it. He just hoped there weren't too many for Dean to handle easily. "They only come to places where there's power." Specifically, Lucifer's power, Sam knew. He hated his next words, but he had to set things up correctly. "They must be here because of m-me."
A rumbling growl rolled out of the throne, making the vine embedded in Sam's side tremble, which shot a blast of pain through him so intense that for a moment he couldn't see, hear, or feel anything else. He just barely caught the angry, petulant reply, "They are here because of my power!"
Checkmate. If he weren't in so much agony, Sam would have smiled. Instead, he reluctantly looked down at his torso, needing to see the extent of the damage that had been done to him. To his dizzying relief, he saw that the vine hadn't impaled him at all, but pushed half a dozen or so thorns just under the skin. The explosive, nauseating pain wasn't from being skewered, it was because the vine had struck so hard that it had badly broken at least one rib. And while broken ribs sucked in a major way, he greatly preferred busted bones to evisceration.
"And why would someone shoot at the shadow birds?" Sam persisted, setting the hook while his opponent was still focused on the bait. He breathed carefully, mustering his strength. What he wouldn't give for some salt or holy oil!
"They freeze humans," the snath said after a pause, like it really wasn't paying much attention. It prodded at him mentally again, looking for a way back into his mind.
"The humans you promised would get out of the woods safely?" Sam asked. He could feel – literally – the thing's full focus snap onto his words. "The sharpas that are here because of you, and are therefore your responsibility, are attacking the humans?"
Deafening silence.
Now, Sam did smile. "So...you broke the deal." It wasn't a question.
The reaction was instantaneous and violent. The vine attached to Sam blenched, tearing itself free of his skin. Sam cried out, rocking back and forth in an effort to ride out the new agony. At the same time, a grating, stone-on-stone sound that spoke of pain shook the ground hard enough to make Sam's teeth grind together. Formed from the power of the fallen archangel who'd invented both demons and demon deals, breaking such a deal hit the cathedra hard. Lucifer could break his own deals, and some demons could, too, but this was just some artifact with an attitude. It was strong but primitive, and very much trapped by the rules, just as Sam had hoped. It had little to no contact with anyone before its spate of attacks, and though it learned quickly and was devious, it was also naive and he'd been able to dupe it.
For the moment, Sam was free. Every movement was torture, but he began to drag himself by his hands and elbows out of his vine cocoon. Slide. Drag. Breathe. Slide. Drag. Breathe. The artifact was growling, and Sam could hear it thrashing, riding out the pain of a broken deal, but luckily the vines in his immediate vicinity were still, because he had no prayer of dodging anything.
He'd made it all of two feet when something big flew overhead at a rapid clip screaming.
"SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Something that sounded an awful lot like Dean.
"Will. You. Get – " Dean yelled the next time he flew past. Sam blinked up at the dark sky, trying to make sense of what he'd seen. It was Dean, holding something light colored, but Sam couldn't work out anything beyond that.
"Is that...your brother?" asked the snath, sounding as confused as Sam was. Sam had the sudden (and terrible, given the state of his ribs) urge to laugh.
"FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU –"
This time, the mysterious figure crashed into the upper branches of a gigantic weeping willow and stopped, apparently hung up. Sam finally thought he knew what it was. It was Dean, of course, with their warding bag...which he was trying to stuff a sharpa into. Not surprisingly, said sharpa, though blinded by the bag, was trying to fly away, and equally unsurprising, Dean refused to let go.
It was among the crazier things Sam had ever seen his brother do, and that was really saying something. He'd deliberately cut himself and verbally taunted a vampire about how delicious he'd taste. He'd beaten an imp to death with potted plant. He'd jumped into a lake he knew was haunted by a malicious, vindictive ghost. He'd even ridden on the back of a hodag. Of course, he'd also agreed to go to Hell to get Sam back. This? This might not crack the top five, but it was still high in the category of Totally Insane Things Done by Dean Winchester.
"Yeah, he's being attacked by one of your shadow birds," Sam gasped out. He couldn't really spare the air, but he couldn't help answering both to twist the knife and to brag about Dean (even if he was doing something that any sane person would consider batshit crazy).
He did wonder what alchemy Dean was trying to perform. It was possible he didn't realize that Sam had done a purification of the bag so there was unlikely to be any residual monsters bits in it. But Dean was a whole lot smarter than he liked to let on, and Sam would bet that he either knew or had a plan b.
Dean cursed again and Sam wished he could see more than just branches moving. He dragged himself forward a few more inches as something – the bag – fell out of the tree and landed near the edge of the so-called dais or raised dirt. One big, shadowy bird leg stuck out of the bag, kicking and scratching wildly, clearly trying to get free from its confines.
"If the deal is void, I can attack him," the cathedra snarled.
The tree began to shake wildly, and Sam tried to call out a warning. "Dean!" But it was barely a whisper and the effort sent stabs of pain and nausea through him.
Two more sharpas flew at the tree, which shook even harder, then the vines over Sam began to constrict. One good squeeze and his internal organs would be pincushions for his broken ribs, but he still could barely tear his eyes away from the willow to hold his little knife up, more worried about Dean than himself. He couldn't lift his arm very much away from his body, but it was enough. As soon as the vine touched the blade, it recoiled again. But only the top vine, the one that had actually touched the knife, reacted. Those over Sam's lower body kept slowly, inexorably moving. Knowing there was no way he could bend forward to reach them with his weapon, Sam focused instead on trying to drag himself out of way as fast as he could. His breath rattled in his abused chest and sweat dripped down his forehead and still he was barely moving. Still, the majority of his attention was on the place where he'd seen Dean disappear.
Across the way, a sharpa screamed and its body fell out of the tree. Then Dean was falling too. He landed hard on his back, and Sam grit his teeth so hard his jaw ached along with most of the rest of his body. Sam gave another pull, as hard as he could...and one vine constricted around his foot, halting his progress. His yell of pain came out as nothing more than a gasp, followed by another as another sharpa shot down out of the tree right toward Dean's unmoving body.
Two things happened at once. First, Dean proved he was either just catching his breath or playing possum, because he twisted his body like a cat's and stabbed the sharpa with perfect accuracy. It poofed unceremoniously out of existence. Second, a leaping Goethe landed atop the artificial atoll and dove into the warded bag. He shoved the rest of the sharpa inside and disappeared after it.
The bag is bigger on the inside, Sam thought blearily, knowing Dean would have mocked him for making a Doctor Who reference.
Dean looked up and somehow, past the massive chair and despite the darkness, zeroed in on Sam. He killed yet another sharpa almost absently and batted a vine aside, intent on reaching Sam. The vine on Sam's foot tightened even harder, and he might even have heard something snap. The vine after Dean came back for another pass and managed a hit on the leg Dean had hurt earlier, sending him to the ground again.
Then the warded bag vomited out a giant nightmare.
Patchy brown and dirty white, it had a Goethe's head...but the size of a T-Rex's head. Its backbone was bare, the ribs meeting up with mottled flesh after about a foot on each side of the spine. Its mouth was in a permanent snarl because the lips were rotted back from the mouth like every zombie Sam had ever seen. Its sabertoothed smile looked remarkably like Deputy Dumbass', though on a much larger scale. Its back two feet were more like pincers than paws and rotated 180 degrees to face backwards, though as soon as it moved, they turned the right way like a squirrel transitioning from climbing to running. Its shoulders down to the dinner plate sized dog-like front paws seemed to be made from stone.
I guess the gargoyle really was alive, was Sam's first, incongruous thought. As far as he could tell, this newest monster contained elements of both Goethe's sides – dog and rå – plus zombie, squirrel, gargoyle, and Nachzehrer.
Oh, Goethe, what did you do to yourself? was Sam's next thought.
The one-time dog snarled like a pissed off Harley Davidson and threw itself at the chair. Every single vine turned and attacked the Cerberus-sized monster, except for the one holding Sam pinned. But he felt immediate relief as the weight of the cathedra's mental pressure lifted. He hadn't realized just how hard it had been pressing.
"Hey, man," Dean said, sliding to a stop by Sam like he was stealing second. He sounded casual, but his eyes were anything but as he rapidly evaluated Sam's state. He immediately started hacking at the vine trapping Sam while tugging up his shirt to see where the blood had come from.
"Use this," Sam whispered as loudly as he could, turning his wrist to offer the butterfly knife. "Nice of you to...show up." He did his best to smile, since Dean looked so very worried. It didn't work because Dean promptly cut through the last vine, which jostled Sam and made him grunt.
"Sorry, sorry," Dean apologized, crouching by Sam's head. "We gotta get you out of that thing's reach." He quickly ran his hands over Sam's back, checking for injuries there. "Ace is giving us a hell of a distraction but..."
Sam had gotten disverted watching the main fight going on between Super Goethe and The Chair of Doom (and worrying about Goethe). Goethe was tearing vines off left and right with his massive jaws, but new vines emerged again and again to stab and slash at him.
And suddenly it occurred to Sam that Dean was about to drag him backwards. "Wait," he hissed urgently. It wasn't loud, but Dean froze instantly. "Can't. Busted ribs."
Dean swore, then swore again and jumped past Sam to deflect a spike broken off the chair that was flying in their direction. He was almost too late, and it nearly landed on Sam's one uninjured foot. "How bad?" Dean asked, drawing his gun to shoot a flailing sharpa. "Bleeding inside? Can we secure it and get you up?"
Before answering, Sam tapped the outside of Dean's ankle to alert him to what looked like a slender tree branch swinging in from that direction. Once Dean had cut it loose from its source, Sam said, "Rib's probably in multiple pieces but no obvious sign of internal bleeding. The outside stuff is superficial." He thought, but didn't add, that they had no safe way to get him down off the raised area even once the cathedra had been destroyed. Dean had enough to worry about with threats coming at them from more than one direction and Sam unable to help or even defend himself.
"Alright, no problem," Dean lied. He wasn't doing so great, either, favoring his right leg and left side, and moving slower than usual, clearly in pain.
The Winchesters couldn't wait for the outcome of the clash of the titans. They were liable to get crushed accidentally. Hell, they were barely holding their own against the outliers.
Not that Dean would give up. He stood over Sam and parried everything that came their way, never dodging or retreating because that would leave Sam vulnerable. The only thing Sam managed to do to help was to take Dean's boot knife and spell it the same way he had his own butterfly knife. His hands were shaking badly, but he thought it still worked, giving them another weapon that was more effective anything attached to the cathedra than before.
"What I wouldn't give for some herbicide," Dean panted out, like usual trying to act like everything was fine. "Or even better, a wood chipper."
"Need...to find...linchpin," Sam managed, hoping Dean would both hear him and understand. The only way to beat the deal-making monster was to destroy the original piece, the handle of the scythe that Lucifer had pushed power into.
Before Dean could answer, the Goethe monster reached the chair itself and took a gigantic bite out of the top of it, slamming his jaws shut with such force that a few of the splinters skewered its mouth from the inside so "drops" of blood the size of gallon jugs splattered to the ground. But the move had put it far too close to the monolith it was up against.
With a deafening crackling, the chair slowly changed shape, looking very much like it stood up off of a plinth. The bottom separated into two parts and two smaller sections broke off from the center higher up, making it look vaguely humanoid, with arms and legs, with a large umbilical cord reaching back to what had been the base of the chair. One of the arms, by itself as big in diameter as a large tree, wrapped around the dog's torso and slammed the entire thing to the ground hard enough to topple the weeping willow Dean had been caught in earlier.
The impact shook the ground, causing Dean's hurt leg to twist. He fell backwards across Sam's legs, knocking Sam from his side onto his back. For a moment (or maybe longer – it was hard to tell), Sam couldn't hear anything but the buzzing in his ears, and everything that went on around him seemed to be moving in slow motion, separate from him somehow.
He saw Goethe struggling to rise but unable to overpower the "arm" that held him, then start to rip at the arm wildly. He saw the way the attack was shredding Goethe's mouth, even tearing out teeth. He saw the arm finally come loose, ripped off, and the cathedra stumble forward, its other arm flinging out for counterbalance. He saw Dean's face in great detail. He was yelling something Sam couldn't hear, a shiny burn on one cheek and a nasty cut on his chin and a whole lot of worry in his eyes.
Sam blinked slowly, trying to get his gears back in the right slots. He could see something swinging toward them – toward Dean – and though it still seemed to be moving in slow motion, he couldn't get his mouth to work fast enough to get out a warning. "W-w-watch –" he tried, because of course, when Dean was worried about Sam, he didn't watch his own back.
Dean got something of the message, or maybe his instincts just kicked in, because he looked up and his eyes widened. He tried to get out of the way.
The flailing vine caught him on the shoulder instead of taking his head off, but the blow was still hard enough to send him flying out of sight. Not just out of sight – off the atoll entirely. Sam tried to reach that way, but his body wasn't reacting yet. "Dean," he breathed out, just a wheeze instead of a the yell he wanted it to be.
There was no way Dean could have heard him, but he called back anyway. "Hang on, Sam! I'm coming!" He sounded faint and out of breath; neither surprising nor reassuring.
Also not reassuring was the way Goethe Plus yowled just then. Sam didn't turn to look at what was happening, though he felt a deep sadness and worry for their faithful companion.
Though fear for Dean was foremost in his mind, Sam's mind cleared a little. With Dean a ways away and no idea how much longer "their" monster could keep the other's attention, Sam couldn't just lie there like a useless lump. He had to marshal his strength do the only thing he could.
Sam pushed away the dread at how much pain he was about to feel and resolutely rolled to his side again. Though nausea rolled over him, he reached up as far as he could and curled his fingers into the grass and dirt. He bent his knees and pushed with both his feet against the ground as he pulled with the hand, curling the other arm over his ribs.
The pain was excruciating, wracking Sam from head to toe.
He didn't stop. He reached up again and grasped the next handful and pulled his feet up again. He pushed and pulled and moved himself another few feet. Then again. And again.
It was very loud and sometimes things whipped by above Sam, but he had no capacity to think about anything except his mission. He had no concept of how much time passed, either.
Then, suddenly, he was there. Sam was behind the base of the diaboli cathedra, the only part not up and fighting the hybrid creature. There was just enough light for him to make out one long, smoothed piece of wood. It wasn't stone and it wasn't twisted and barbed like the rest of the chair. It looked like an old, rather crude, broom handle.
Sam pulled himself half a foot more. He breathed in and out twice, then laid his butterfly knife against the vine that was wrapped around the snath. As the former flinched away, Sam grabbed the latter and slid it free of its stony cage. Knowing what the move would cost him, he threw the stick like a javelin as hard as he could in the general direction that Dean had fallen, curling his shoulders forward to put more power behind the throw.
It flew in a lovely arc right off the edge of the artificial hill, but that was all Sam saw. The motion made something grind against something else inside of him, setting off fireworks behind his eyes.
"I wonder how this story ends," he thought as darkness claimed him.
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AN: Sillich is a word that either means strange/fantastic/wonderful in old English or blessed in Frisian.
The letters Sam puts on his knife are the Anglicized names of real letters, from (respectively): German, Russian, Greek, Cuneiform, and Japanese. My info on most came from a simple Google search, so apologies if I've gotten something wrong.
Some of the crazy stuff that Dean did from Sam's list happened in the show. He taunted the vampire in season 3, episode 7, Fresh Blood. He jumped into a lake haunted by an angry ghost in season 1, episode 3, Dead in the Water.
"It's bigger on the inside" is the most common people say on the TV show Doctor Who when they see his ship (the TARDIS).
Christine: Yes! You know I get Bobby into stories every time I can.
Long Live BRUCAS: So what do you think about Dean's plan? Hehe.
Colby's girl: I regret to say that we are expecting a "wintry mix" tomorrow, which makes me want to throw things. But, hey, I'm glad that you liked the previous chapter!
muffinroo: Thank you! High praise considering there wasn't any Sam in the last chapter. I hope you're still happy given everything that happened in this chapter!
sfaulkenberry: I thought of you when I put another Princess Bride quote in my author's notes. Why doesn't it surprise me that you seem to love that movie as much as I do? So, was this enough Sam for you even though Dean made a couple cameos? And yes, the truly suck at talking about feelings!
sylvia37: When I finished up this chapter, I literally thought, "oh man, sylvia37 is gonna be really mad at me!" Please forgive me? If I promise schmoop and happy endings?
scootersmom: Ha! So true about Dean. That made me laugh. Both the guys are doing some crazy stuff in this story. Hope you enjoyed this chapter!
Kathy: Ace's attitude was actually inspired by a story Janice once told me about her dog. I knew you'd like the flashback! No, I never wrote about the inland kraken. Your "yet" made me chuckle. Dean didn't create an explosion, but hopefully you found it fun anyway.
Lilyfear: Thank you! You are very kind. I have a feeling that the Goethe monster makes it even more horroresque. (Yeah, not a word...I just can't think of the word I want!) I hope you enjoy or can at least tolerate yet another cliffhanger.